Sunday, December 13, 2009

back to the drawing board...




I returned to drawing studio again today, two weeks in a row. Thanks to Aaron and Jessica who came along for the ride and ate dark chocolate with me during studio time.

I was not in the mood to draw, which made this experience perfect for me, because "the artist's way" says that your creative flow should be at anytime, not a notion to wait for her creative highness to arrive before you can start flowing (Aaron took this idea to greater lengths and gave his figure a imaginary crown, bravo!)

Sketch after sketch I found nothing prevailed to me as "beautiful". I then remembered showing my sketches from last week to my darling boyfriend, who then asked why none of my drawings had a rather important male appendage. I was more interested in his shoulders, I said... and ran out of time since those were quick sketches, and also his poses were conservative. We laughed to think that if the role was reversed, a male artist drawing a female nude, the first thing he would draw would be her breasts. Another artist today said he had a teacher who refrained them from drawing nipples, because students would draw them even if they weren't there...such is the hypnotic power of the female body.

I thus followed the inspiration I was given, in the form of masculine admiration for the female form...I over exaggerated curves. I drew the right nipple, which I could not see. It was a delight to celebrate the female figure... it made my own insecurities disappear as everything about her body I found beautiful to draw. We as women need to truly remember the power that we have, as captured so eloquently by Paulo Neruda in the last line of his poem oda a la belle desnuda (ode to a beautiful nude):

Debajo de tu piel vive la luna.
(The moon lives in the lining of your skin)

Monday, December 7, 2009

the artist within



I started reading a book called the artist way a few months back, which is about feeding your inner artist and becoming creative again. I realized that I had become so judgemental of myself that I became afraid of trying anything new in terms of creating, because I believed I was not good enough or worthy enough to create.

In celebration of my artist within, I decided to do a three hour studio figure drawing session. I just did not pay attention to the critic i got in my head, and instead made the event about artistic expression...that nothing would be wrong. Here in these two drawing that I share, I did not let the pen lift off the paper...and I used pretty colors. I actually quite like them. who cares if i drew an extra leg, or maybe his head was a big too big?

So everybody, go out and do something creative! I promise, you'll feel really good about yourself.